UN Security Council urges justice for Congo rape victims

An outraged UN Security Council called Thursday on the Democratic Republic of Congo to find and punish those behind a horrific mass rape in the war-torn east of the country.The United Nations on Monday reported that at least 179 women and children had been raped between July 30 and August 3 in and around the town of Luvungi in Nord-Kivu province, where Rwandan Hutu rebels are active.

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United Nations (United States) (AFP) - UN troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo are taking up positions to support a planned offensive against Hutu rebels in the east after they ignored a deadline to surrender, a UN spokesman said.

More than 100 villagers in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo were raped or beaten in a two-day attack this month, the Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said Thursday.A local parliamentarian blamed army soldiers for the violence."Our teams have treated since Tuesday more than 100 people who were victims of rape or physical violence between June 10 and 12," said Megan Hunter, head of the Dutch branch of MSF in Sud-Kivu province.The attack was in the Sud-Kivu village of Nyakiele, she told AFP.

Goma (DR Congo) (AFP) - Twenty-two people, most of them women and children, have been killed in a new attack in the troubled east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, just days after a similar massacre, a government official said on Saturday.

A draft United Nations report accusing Rwandan troops of having killed and raped Hutu refugees in the DR Congo, is "flawed and dangerous" and an "insult to history", the Kigali government said.The UN will officially publish later Friday the controversial report, which details a litany of crimes by armed forces against civilians over the period 1993 to 2003 in the Democratic Republic of Congo.The draft version of the report said that some of the crimes perpetrated by Rwandan soldiers could count as possible acts of genocide.

A controversial UN-backed operation reported to have claimed hundreds of civilian lives has succeeded in disrupting Rwandan Hutu rebels in eastern Congo and will be wrapped up by year's end, a UN envoy said Wednesday.Alan Doss, the UN special envoy to Democratic Republic of Congo, told the Security Council that the objective of the Kimia II operation against rebels of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) "has been largely achieved although... there have been very serious humanitarian consequences."

Amid one of the the world’s most troubled regions, Simon Village maintains that it is business as usual for his company.
All the same, he will admit to being a little alarmed by recent events near his operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
“If you remember, the M23 were just sitting in the bushes north of Goma. And then, all of a sudden, they were in Goma. It caught people by surprise,” the chief executive of gold miner Banro Corp. said in a phone interview from the DRC.